If I know my bad Japanese movies correctly, the radiation is going to mutate that robot until it is 80 feet tall and only Gamera will be able to stop it.
Robot clearly never watched the ending of Fallout 3 about letting the humans do it instead.
Without the addon there was a robot companion that would refuse to go in, just like Fawkes does before you get the dlc. After you get the dlc both companions will go in, and be fine afterwards, because radiation doesn’t affect them.
Much like Fawkes the robot companion said some BS about not robbing you of your destiny before you install that particular dlc.
A sincere question: why they don’t place some relay/repeater for the robot’s signal so they could control it from anywhere in the world through internet (or even some very private wireless communication network, outside internet due to security concerns)? The fact that they have to switch personnel every 15 minutes is a sign that they’re doing this in situ, rather than remotely.
Drones with mobile network connectivity are already a thing, for example. If you consider that internet exposure is dangerous (connection could be hacked, etc), ham transceiver repeaters are also a thing, and you can even chain many of them across many kilometers. It’s called mesh network.
Highly Radioactive situations and nuclear applications in general cause great trouble with any digital device, let alone complex Wireless communication, due to the fact that the particles being emmited can flip bits on your Microprocessors and make the whole thing break down. Fully analog devices are used for control applications in nuclear plants for that reason, there is likely something like that going on with this setup
How radioactive is the robot afterwards?
That kinda depends on exactly what it is removed and how. Being exposed to radiation doesn’t make you radioactive. Ingesting radioactive particles will kinda make you radioactive until those particles reach their end of life and fission. I would be surprised if the robot is actually radioactive once it is done, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that the structural integrity of the robot has been compromised due to exposure to radiation.
Source: former Navy Nuclear Power Program Electronics Technician Instructor.
Good question
Be really interested to know what it’s made out of. Had a coworker who used to work in forgings and did some stuff that got sent to nuclear plants, they said that they had really strict requirements on material compositions, specifically needed to ensure that the (think it was steel, may have been something else) material had basically no traces of cobalt in it because the cobalt would becomes radioactive over the service life.
There are several factors to consider when choosing materials in a nuclear plant. For things that aren’t in direct proximity to the reactor core, neutron activation (becoming radioactive) is less of a concern. Aluminum produces hydrogen gas when exposed to boric acid, which presents an explosion risk. Certain chemical compounds can cause corrosion to plant equipment, even a Sharpie marker could corrode a valve or pipe and cause issues over the 50 year life span of a plant.
Depends heavily on the kind (and intensity) of radiation. Beta (electron/positron) and gamma (photon) generally won’t, but neutron and alpha can. Many of the atoms that become radioactive will rapidly decay, and that’s one of the mechanisms behind the impact to structural integrity.
Shortly after I returned to the States from Fukushima (a little bit after the disaster), I was taking an emergency response course on radioactivity. Everybody there got to use a Geiger counter on themselves and their belongings and various things in the room. The only thing that set it off was the purse I had brought back with me.
Anecdotal, obviously, and it wasn’t highly radioactive, but I did get rid of the purse.
Itself, not very, but any dust or flakes that land on it definitely will be. It only takes very small particles.
Usually, equipment like that is abandoned in place. Radiation has weakened its parts, and decontamination is complex and time-consuming for something you can’t just hose and scrub down.
